Venus in Fur

Roman Polanski moves "Venus in Fur" to Paris and gives it a French translation, but it's otherwise a straightforward adaptation of David Ives' hit play. It's a chamber piece between two people in a 96-minute psychosexual power struggle.

In the pivotal role of Vanda, Polanski casts his wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, which from a distance sounded a little like when Sergei Bondarchuk ("War and Peace") cast his own wife as the most beautiful young woman in Russia. At 47 during filming, Seigner is 20 years older than Nina Arianda was when she played Vanda on Broadway. But no, Polanski is too cold-blooded for husbandly self-delusion. Seigner remains as powerfully seductive as she ever was.

She is also more than capable of navigating the character's shifts in mood and tone. The film begins in an empty theater, at the end of a long day of auditions. Thomas (Mathieu Amalric), a writer-director, has been trying to cast the female lead in his own adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's short novel, "Venus in Furs." He is in the midst of complaining that no women are auditioning, only girls, when a woman walks in, all right. But at first he doesn't see anything in her.

Vanda is late and scattered, doesn't seem very smart and indicates that she hasn't really read the script. Her conviction that she can do the role seems to arise only from the fact that she shares the first name of the central character. But when she finally auditions - after doing everything but beg for the chance - the shift comes. The flightiness disappears, and she is as confident and womanly as Cleopatra.

These shifts back and forth, between Vanda's real-life demeanor and her acting mode, are fascinating and force the viewer to contemplate the distance between who actors are and how they can seem. But "Venus in Fur" cuts deeper than that, making us wonder what exactly is the act, after all. Perhaps the innocuousness is a pose, a necessary feminine defense, and real life is being revealed in art.

The story being portrayed is that of a man's mental and sexual enslavement. (The term "masochist" derives from Sacher-Masoch's name and from this novella.) As the film goes on, various scenes from the novella are enacted, interspersed by discussion and argument. Thomas insists, as male critics will, that Sacher-Masoch's work is beyond sex, that it's a masterpiece of psychological insight. But Vanda is unimpressed, and gradually she begins to seem like some avenging angel on behalf of every woman ever misrepresented in art.

Much has been made of Mathieu Amalric's resemblance to Roman Polanski - they might, in fact, be distantly related. But it would be silly to mistake this film adaptation as some autobiographical expression of dynamics within the Seigner-Polanski marriage. Pay attention to the camera, and you will see that Polanski is a clinician. He is in the thrall of no one.